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Two weeks ago I got a phone call from an OCS reader, who has recently launched his clothing brand in Kolkata for the domestic market. He is sourcing garments from Tirupur, a knits manufacturing hub in India. He needed some clarification on what all quality standards he should follow for his products in terms of testing of fabric properties and why garment testing is important.

I had pointed few most important fabric properties to be tested prior to accepting finished goods from supplier, in our discussion. I suggested him to maintain certain level of quality standards for fabrics to have a quality product on which end consumer relies upon and love his products. In this post I have explained the reasons why fabrics properties to be tested and source products only if those meet quality standard.

image courtesy: thehundubusinessline

Importance of Garment and Fabric Testing

I thought some of you may have your own clothing brands or sourcing garments for retailers. You may like to know that how to make customer happy and convert them repeated customers? Put yourselves in customer’s shoes and think how many times you were unhappy with the clothes you had purchased from the local market?

What things irritate you most and make you unhappy with newly purchased garments? Suppose

You had purchased a Medium size T-shirt and it becomes less than equal to Small Size shirt after first washing.

Color of your T-shirt got faded just wearing 15 days and after 10 washing garment look like 2 years old T-shirt.

You purchased a dark color pant and when you washed it, color bleeds and stain your white briefs.

No customer would come back again to buy your brand if they have bad experience like above cases. Instead they will do negative marketing of your brand by telling their friends and relatives not to buy your brand.

To get success in your brand for long term, you should take care of these things that your customer should not have such bad experience.

How to solve these issues?

It is not a difficult thing to control such issues related to fabric and garment embellishments. You have just need to tell your supplier when you are signing an order to give you test report on common fabric properties. The test report would ensure you the quality in fabric properties (both physical and chemical)? Ask your vendor to test fabric and garment from a certified testing lab and don’t accept finished goods unless you received testing report. Testing can be on fabric form or after garment is made.

Basic testing Parameters

I have listed down important lab tests that you can set for your products. Test requirement may vary from fabric to fabric and finishing done on the fabric and the garments. For the test standards you can set it after discussing with an expert in this field.

In following table I have provided testing standards for woven and knits products for your example. Standards are just for your reference.